


this photograph of my hands

by torigates



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-12-31 12:32:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates/pseuds/torigates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade rushed to her side. “Shh, Artemis,” she said, stroking her hair and shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re okay. Please stop crying. Please stop crying. I don’t want dad to know, he’ll be so mad.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	this photograph of my hands

 

 

 

  
this is a photograph

of my hands

opening and holding something

 

what I’m holding is not clear

 

I took this photograph of my hands

to show you

I can still hold things

 

even if they are not you I am holding

\- Denver Butson

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

When Artemis was five years old, Jade took her tobogganing. They had an old fashioned sled, one made out of wood that curled over at the front.

The hill by their apartment was at the back of the park, and at the bottom there was a chain-link fence. Jade put her in the front, and Artemis tucked her feet underneath the lip of the sled.

“When I say so,” Jade told her. “You jump, okay?”

Artemis nodded, and Jade pushed the sled, sliding in behind her and wrapping her arms around Artemis’ waist. It was cold, and the rushing wind made tears spring to her eyes.

“Now!” Jade yelled in her ear. Artemis tried to jump off behind her sister, but her feet were caught in the sled. The fence was coming closer and closer, and she could hear Jade yelling at her to jump over and over again.

The whole thing probably took ten seconds, but when it was over, she was lying flat on her back in the snow, cradling her broken wrist to her body and crying at the top of her lungs.

Jade rushed to her side. “Shh, Artemis,” she said, stroking her hair and shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re okay. Please stop crying. Please stop crying. I don’t want dad to know, he’ll be so mad.”

Artemis tried to stop crying, but little choking sobs still escaped. Jade pulled her to her feet, and slung her arm around Artemis’ shoulders and they walked home together. Artemis tried not to move her wrist more than she had to, but it still hurt with every step she took.

Mom was working that night. Jade made her dinner, and Artemis did her best to eat with her good hand. She went to bed.

She can’t remember if she slept that night. Mom screamed in the morning when she saw Artemis’ blue and back arm, her wrist swollen up to twice the normal size. They went to the hospital, and Artemis had a cast for the next six weeks.

Her dad was furious.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Over the years Artemis has had more scrapes, bruises, fractures, sprains, breaks, concussions and other forms of bodily harm than she cares to remember.

Dad yelled at her every time she got hurt. She was too slow, too lazy, too dumb, too absent-minded. She _wasn’t paying attention_. Even when she came out on top it wasn’t good enough for him. Artemis learned how to let his words roll off her skin, the scars left behind from her fights marking something else entirely.

The scars on her body map out her failures and her achievements. _Hers_ , and no one else’s.

It wasn’t until she joined the team that Artemis started to think about the frailty of other people’s bodies in terms of something that could hurt her instead of a way to get ahead in a fight.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Artemis never thought of herself as invincible. She didn’t think of other people that way either. It was impossible when faced with the fragility of her mother’s broken body on a daily basis.

Heroes were another matter all together.

Then she and Robin almost drowned. Then she almost drowned again, and Wally broke his arm. Artemis was used to seeing her friends strong and whole in ways she was not. To see Robin’s heaving chest after coming out of the water, or Wally sitting on the couch with the white plaster a stark contrast against the bright yellow of his Kid Flash costume was not something she knew how to handle. These people with their brightness, and shining beacons for goodness in the world should not get hurt like everyone else. They shouldn’t be able to get hurt like her.

Those moments of brightness, of life in the face of death, only remind her more of their mortality. It was fucking morbid, but Artemis couldn’t help it. She never thought of herself in terms of living or dying, except for the strong survival instinct dad had ingrained in her for as long as she could remember. With her team, suddenly the stakes seemed so much higher.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

The bile burned hot in the back of her throat when Artemis awoke from the their training exercise. She inhaled deeply, and tried to settle her stomach as the world of her teammates crashed around her.

She had dealt with her fair share of people being hurt or dying. She could handle that. She could even handle the actual death part. It was the waking up again that was harder than anything else she had faced before.

Artemis had never been a part of something like this before; where her presence made a difference, where she mattered. Even though she had missed everything that happened, even though it was _her fault_ , she couldn’t have stopped it. She died and her team fell apart. The whole fucking world fell apart. It was terrifying.

Never before had she thought about the sheer responsibility of what they did as heroes. How people depended on them, and how they depended on each other.

“It’s not a sign of weakness to open up to your friends,” Black Canary told her.

“I know that,” she said, drawing her knees up protectively in front of her.

She knew that, she did. That did not mean she could unlearn a lifetime of knowledge.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

The television was blaring _NO SIGNAL_. Artemis was starting to understand why Conner watched this all the time. It was kind of mind-numbingly peaceful.

Wally wandered in carrying a mostly empty bowl of popcorn. He looked a little forlornly at the blackened kernels in the bottom before coming to sit next to her on the couch. He placed the bowl on the table in front of them.

“Hey,” Artemis said. She pulled her feet up underneath her. Wally sat on the other end of the couch, out of her reach but close enough. She remembered vaguely that his arm had not been broken during their mission. It was broken now, dirty plaster and fraying gauze at his elbow and around his fingers.

“Hey,” Wally said, stretching out his left, unbroken arm across the backrest. His fingers stretching out, not quite touching her shoulder.

“Did Black Canary declare you sane and fit for duty?” she asked, trying for flippant.

Wally tilted his head back, looking up at the ceiling. He stayed like that for a long time, Artemis thought he wasn’t going to answer her. In the background the hiss of static seemed loud. She suddenly, desperately wanted to know what he had said to Black Canary.

Finally, he looked up at her, a small smirk playing across his lips. “Me?” he asked. “Sane? Never.”

Artemis smiled. “Well that is true,” she said, and reached out to shove him. Her hand lingered on his side, pressed to his ribs against her choice. She felt him inhale.

“I did blow myself up, after all,” he admitted quietly.

“What?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

He shrugged and shook his head. “A long time ago,” he said. “It feels like it, anyway.”

She had moved closer to him without noticing it. Wally turned and smiled at her faintly. He reached out and circled his fingers around her wrist, and Artemis could feel the way her pulse hammered inside her skin.

Her veins were visible along the underside of her arm, delicate and exposed. The bone in her wrist still protruded a little, evidence of her long healed break there to see if one knew where to look.


End file.
